As a young reporter, I dreaded any feature assignment that meant writing about children. My aversion was rooted in two false presumptions.
First, I assumed that stories about children were puff pieces just like cute animal features. And when my editors assigned me these pieces I interpreted it as commentary on my ability to report news. I never volunteered to write about children, because I thought it was a fast track to being pegged as something other than the hard-hitting, assertive journalist I wanted to be.
Secondly, I thought children were impossible to write about, mainly because they are so hard to quote. They speak in one-word answers and nonsense sentences. They offer up so little. Meaningful information must be dragged out of children in tortuous interviews that go something like this:
Reporter: What’s camp like?
Child: Fun.
Reporter: What’s fun about it?
Child: I don’t know, everything.
Reporter: What do you like the most?
Child: The bus ride.
Reporter: What do you like about the bus ride?
Child: I don’t know, it’s fun.
Reporter: What have you done at camp?
Child: Lots of stuff.
Reporter: Like what?
Child: Play games.
Reporter: What games?
Child: I can’t remember the name of them.
Reporter: Have you ever been to camp before?
Child: Can I go?
Any reporter who’s ever covered a parade, a special program for kids, or a new school has experienced this interview or something close to it.
Now, I know that my early ideas about children’s stories were wrong. Telling the stories of children is one of the most important things journalists do. We might not take the job very seriously for the all the reasons that adults don’t take children seriously. They’re children, their concerns seem frivolous, their lives seem simple.
Yet, if you look at the list of winners and finalists for any big journalism prize -– the Pulitzers, Best of the West, Best Newspaper Writing –- you will find a handful of beautifully crafted stories that provide a window into the intricate, complex lives of children, from pre-schoolers to teenagers. Read Enrique’s Journey or The Boy Behind the Mask and it is impossible to dismiss a child’s story as unimportant.
Children offer us a sympathetic window into foreign worlds we would otherwise have a difficult time seeing. Whether it is the hormonally-charged environment of teenagers, a forgotten family in an underdeveloped nation, or the mentally ill, if we can see it through the eyes of a child, or just see the effect such conditions have on a child, we might be moved to care at least enough to read to the end of the story — if not to act on our emotions.
So children provide journalists with a starting point, a common denominator. In a child we find the opportunity to suspend judgment and blame.
Although I believe my original hunches about children’s stories were false, I believe they are widely held by journalists. Often, we don’t value such stories. We send the youngest, least experienced reporters to cover children’s stories. On the education beat, reporters spend most of their time talking to and writing about adults.
Children offer us a sympathetic window into foreign worlds we would otherwise have a difficult time seeing.I called a couple of journalists known for their ability to write about children. Tom Hallman of The Oregonian wrote The Boy Behind the Mask (about a teenager with a disfiguring tumor) and 1-2-3 Blush (about 12-year-olds learning to dance). Tom French of the St. Petersburg Times co-wrote 13 (about a bunch of 13-year-olds), South of Heaven (about 16-year-olds) and The Girl Whose Mother Lives in the Sky (about four-year-olds).
I asked them why we should tell stories of children. They both said the same thing.
Hallman: “This is such a cliché, but they are the future. If you are around kids you come away feeling a profound hope.”
French: “They are our future, our hope, our fear, everything we do is designed to build toward a future, their future.”
(Maybe one of the criteria for good reporting on children is the reporter must be unashamed about his idealism.)
Hallman and French both agreed that reporting a child’s story requires a special set of skills. You can’t just show up and interview them and expect good material.
Hallman: “You can’t rush a kid. The amount of reporting that goes into dealing with a kid is a lot more intense. You have to be aware of silences, how they feel uncomfortable. You look like a teacher or a parent to them and they worry they will look stupid.”
French: “Kids are the best quotes there are. But they aren’t ‘quote’ quotes. You have to listen to how they speak to their friends, their parents, their teachers. The interview is only one way to get information.”
In addition to spending time with children, rather than dropping in on them for a quick interview, French offered one more bit of advice, particularly for stories about younger children.
French: “Get over the cute thing. They really are cute, just beautiful, adorable, but we have to get past that. It’s a very patronizing, condescending kind of thing.”
For more resources on reporting on children see the Casey Journalism Center on Children and Families.
Also, I’m interested in hearing more tips. What techniques have you discovered for reporting on children? What techniques work in print, television, radio or photography?
